


Victory in Waiting

by nirejseki



Series: Victory At End [1]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Norse Religion & Lore, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-18
Updated: 2016-11-18
Packaged: 2018-08-31 15:30:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8583826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki
Summary: And then the gods come for them.
(a norse mythology au)





	

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: I wish you would write a fic where coldwave meets Norse mythology

Mick loves his mother and he loves his father and he loves his twin brother, no matter what anyone says. His father makes flames dance and twists the shadows into shapes for Mick's pleasure, his wide mouth grinning and his flame-bright hair falling into his eyes; his mother would chide him, and he would kiss her quiet, and she would take Mick and his twin brother to bed and sing them to sleep before returning to her own bed, where Mick and his brother could hear their parents laughing. 

When Mick is just old enough to walk, Mick's father takes him to the grand halls of men, to sit by the fires and listen to the tales and songs and poems, but Mick prefers it when they stay home and Mick's father spins wonderful stories just for them - not just deeds of strength and valor, like you could hear in the halls of men, but of cunning and of wiles and of wit, where the sharpest mind saves the day when all strength fails. Sometimes the stories are grand and the wise one is honored; sometimes he is taken for granted.

Mick loves those stories, though he puts his small hand into his father's large palm and tells his father solemnly that he fears he will never be as wise or as wicked as to master fate like in the stories. 

"Ah, fret not, my little bright one," Mick's father says, flame dancing in his eyes as he smiles. "You are your mother's son and you have inherited her heart; like her, you love without reserve and that love lets you stand tall and proud, for you alone of our family have never known shame. You are the heir of your mother's glory, the harbinger of the eventual victory: your brother was born in the last hour of night and he has taken all of my cunning into himself, but you, my youngest, were content with your place; your mother labored fiercely until at last you were born in the light of the dawn."

"It doesn't sound so bad when you put it that way," Mick tells his father.

"Is your father not known throughout the land as a silver-tongue?" his father asks, pulling Mick into his lap and tickling him until Mick giggles. "What use is such a title if I can't even make my littlest son smile?"

"I'm not that little!" Mick pouts, leaning up to kiss his father's cheek.

"Your elder brother has grown so large as to encircle the earth," Mick's father says, his smile fading, his eyes growing distant. "And my eldest is grown large enough to eat the gods; their sister is large not in size but in strength, for she rules a throne of fearful power. In comparison to them, my child, you and your brother are little indeed."

"I did not know I had such gigantic siblings," Mick says, enthralled. "Why did they not come to our birth-day celebration last week?" For Mick is very small still, but he has grown old enough to count, and he is wise enough to know that more family means more presents. 

His father does not answer at first, but his lips slant into a frown and his eyes narrow with anger. "They cannot," he finally says. "For they have been taken from me; the gods say they are monsters."

"No kin of mine is a monster, and I'll fight anyone who says they are," Mick declares firmly, holding up his little fists in threat, and his father's anger breaks like the ice on the river at the start of spring, dissolving like a snowflake.

"Oh, my son, never lose your spirit," Mick's father says, laughing gaily once more. Mick's brother, his other half, comes into the room then, impatient to begin playing; he is like their father, a flame quick to catch, while Mick resembles their steadfast mother, a lantern that burns steady through the night, the fire that roars in their hearth through the day. "You will be a wildfire yet, my boys."

"But perhaps not yet," Mick's mother says from the doorway, her smile warm. "No matter how great they become in time, all wildfires start off small and must be fed to grow - and so I have made dinner, and you should all come."

Mick sits on the bench with his brother, who wraps an arm over Mick's shoulders. It was his brother who gave Mick the name he calls himself, calling Mick his own with a lisp from his cleft palate, for Mick's uncle, his father's blood-brother, has had a new son as well and called him by Mick’s true name. That son grew a lifetime in a day and is now a man who roars every day for vengeance for the death of a brother he never knew, while Mick grows slowly, and so Mick yields that name to which he was first bearer.

Mick doesn't mind. He likes being called Mick.

"I go tomorrow to the sea-god's feast," Mick's father says to Mick's mother. "So you will not need to make so much; I know how great a burden my appetite is!" For indeed Mick's father's appetite was legendary for rivalling the wildfire itself; Mick and his brother were hungry, too, but they were still small and only part-formed, and so their mother was still able to feed them all.

Mick's mother frowns as though displeased. "I did not think you were invited," she says cautiously. 

"I am not," Mick's father says, his smile broad and wicked. "I have a mind to make mischief." 

"There is still much mourning over the death of -"

"Bah!" Mick's father cuts in. "I have never had any patience for that wishy-washy man-child, that mother's son whose valor was worth less than nothing - for what man may not be brave when nothing may harm him?" 

"But still -"

"And then when he did meet his doom," Mick's father continues, clearly piqued, "even that would not satisfy them, no! They demanded mourning as though it were tribute, that with our very bodies we pay his ransom from death! The arrogance knows no end. No, it shall not be borne - if the gods go forth to the great hall by the sea to drink away their cares in ale, so too shall I go."

"You will not find friends there," Mick's mother warns. "And though you shall be victorious in the end, I cannot tell you what the path before then shall be. Only your blood-brother knows the magic for that."

"I need not friends," Mick's father scoffs. "I have my mind and my wit, and the laws of hospitality themselves are on my side; if they meet me well, why, we will have no quarrel! But if they treat me ill, then they will see how much trouble a spark of flame can cause."

"Do not go, my husband! Stay here, where your hearth is tended, your bed warm, your children loving."

"I go tomorrow," Mick's father repeats. "Kiss me well to-night, my love; for you will not see me past the dawn."

True to his words, Mick's father is gone by morning, and he stays gone that night. Mick plays with his brother all day and returns to his mother at night.

Her smiling fades as first a week passes, then another. Mick's brother offers to go to the halls and listen for word, but she forbids him. He returns one evening with their father's cocky smile on his face and says that their father started such mischief that no god can look any other in the face, and that he stays in a house that none can find with a door in each direction.

Mick rolls his eyes and pays it no mind.

He should have.

They all should have.

Mick's father had told them that his children were taken away - and Mick and his brother are their father's sons.

The gods come for them.

Their mother screams their names, beating with futile fists against the breastplates of gods of strength and battle and thunder, and Mick and his brother are dragged by uncaring hands into a cavern deep within the earth, their mother following behind. Mick's father is there already, his eyes darkened with bruises, his chest heaving with pain, and gods who once named him among their finest companions hold him down. 

"Do not touch them," Mick's father cries out upon seeing them. "Do not harm my children, or I will curse all of you, one and all!"

"Very well," one goddess says, and her face is narrow and cruel; her lips twisted in a terrible sneer. " _We_ will not harm them."

And Mick and his brother are cast towards the floor or the cave, but before they can rise up to run to their father a goddess steps forward and catches Mick's face in her palm, and she reaches forward with a glowing finger to draw upon his forehead -

Many years later, Mick hears stories that claim that he did not remember what happened next, when the madness came upon him. But in truth the gods did not grant him such a kindness, no matter that he and his brother had not yet seen eight summers and were poor opponents for the gods in their full glory. No, there was no such mercy. Mick remembers exactly what happened next, when the madness came first upon him to make him a rabid wolf instead of a man. 

Mick remembers howling in agony as his mind tore into itself, remembers the unquenchable flames that surrounded him and burned him, remembers his brother reaching for him –

He remembers tooth and claw, blunt human teeth and blunt human nails, his brother screaming as he was rent apart from neck to belly, his streaming entrails spilling out on the floor, the gods rushing forward with greedy hands to pull them over to Mick's father, who was screaming as though his heart had been destroyed - he remembers the cruel-faced goddess with a snake wound around her hand, crowing that the insult to her honor would be avenged –

He remembers running away.

They shot arrows after him that would have pierced his flesh, that would have tripped him to smash his skull upon the rocks, but Mick's father thrashed so much upon the ground that the ground itself began to shake and the gods turned their attention back to him, and so Mick was able to follow his nose to fresh air and the outside, and he runs, and runs, and runs.

He does not go home.

He doesn't remember where home is.

His mind is aflame.

Mick sleeps within the bushes and hides his face from all who come by; he is more wolf than man, running on four legs and rendering meat with his teeth, always surprised when his flat teeth did not tear flesh as easily as he thought they would.

His brother's flesh tore easily enough.

Mick runs and does not weep, for he is mad.

The sun travels through the sky, and the beast pursuing it calls out to him as fellow-kind; the one pacing in the wake of the moon does the same. They cannot help him.

Still, Mick runs.

The earth shakes beneath him and he hears the echoes of his father's screams and his mother's sobs.

Still, Mick runs.

In his madness, he does not keep to a direction, but in the end he comes to the sea.

He wanders the shores for some time, though time is meaningless to him, and then the land rises up from the sea.

Not land.

A serpent, so large that even five meters above the sea does not fully reveal its head from beneath the waves.

"My brother," it says, its voice booming and echoing, yet muted as though speaking through jaws firmly clenched. "My littlest brother, come closer."

Mick edges closer to the waves, until he is in the water up to his knees.

"Closer."

The water is to his waist.

"Closer."

The water rises to his chin.

"Closer!"

Mick is submerged in the sea.

The waves beat his head against the serpent’s scales, and the glowing rune on his forehead rubs off with each blow.

His mind cools.

His mind _remembers_.

Mick screams, and chokes, and begins to drown, but his brother rears up and brings his belly down hard. The ensuing wave carries Mick out onto the beach, and he clings to the sand dunes as the water flows back out.

He curls up into a ball and for the first time since his father left them to go to the doomed feast, Mick weeps.

"The madness is still there," his brother – for this is his brother, second-eldest, the one who encircles the world – tells him mournfully. "The rune is gone, but the damage is not such that can be fully healed. It will wax and wane. Avoid flames and fire, and you will be safer."

Mick, still weeping, says only, "I will not give up my father's birth-right." 

His elder brother, his half-brother, his father's son, sinks beneath the wave, saying nothing.

There's nothing to say.

Mick doesn't run anymore, but he doesn't stay, either. Everything reminds him of his father, his mother, his brother.

He goes among the towns of man, and they accept him as one of their own, although one of great height and strength even for his tender age. Mick shrugs when they ask, and punches the first man who suggests, even jokingly, that there might be jotun blood in him. 

Mick does not know shame, not of his family, no, but he knows how to hide. He bows his head when the sacrifices to the gods are made and hides the bubbling fury and terror in his heart. 

He hears the stories they tell: how the fire-god, the god of mischief and clever strategy, went too far for the gods to bear, how he was imprisoned beneath the earth. How a snake drips venom upon his face, causing terrible pain. How his loyal wife catches it in her bowl, her task never-ending; how he screams and thrashes and shakes the earth with his agonies whenever she goes to empty the bowl.

How the stories speak of his vengeance, of revenge.

Of Ragnarök.

Mick is pleased that his brother's death will be paid back in such valuable coin. He wouldn't have traded his brother for the world; it is only right that the world itself should be forfeit for his brother.

Mick is not spoken of, and this, too, is just, for there is no mercy in the world for brother-killers, and no revenge he can lawfully seek as the hand which committed the dreadful act. 

He lives among mankind, homeless but for their pity, trading the strength of his arm in battle or with the harvest, until he is old enough to be counted a man; and then, when the men of his adopted tribe begin to speak of brides, he abandons them and goes to find his eldest brother. 

The houses of those who mocked him in his penury and bouts of madness he leaves in flames.

The journey is hard, but Mick is a jotun's son and hardy, but more than that, he is his mother's child: as with everything he tries, in the end, eventually, he is victorious. 

His brother the chained wolf is glad to see him, though Mick cannot help him escape his bindings. Mick relays the stories of the end that he has heard, warns his brother of the victories and dangers foretold, and lays his hands upon his brother's massive snout to wish him nothing but glory and victory.

Mick is perhaps not much of a god, but his wishes still have some potency. 

His curses are stronger, but he has not yet found a proper target for his rage, and the gods are already doomed. 

"I don't know what to do now," Mick confesses to the eldest of his brothers. "I know there is one other, our sister, but to visit her is even more treacherous a journey -"

"Wait until she visits you," his brother suggests. "But you are wrong - there is more than one other."

"How's that?" Mick says, frowning. 

"We four alone who live share a father, this is true. But our father was sly and crafty; he could wear skins other than his own."

"I once saw him take up a cloak of feathers," Mick admits. "And to please -" He cannot say his twin's name. "- he once took on the form of a strange beast with a curved back, from the deserts far to the south, and let us ride."

"You have heard the story of the building of the walls?"

"Who hasn't?" Mick says, lips twisting. His father coaxed out an excellent deal and when the terms came due, the gods did not wish to pay and threatened death if he did not help them cheat the workman; his father chose dishonor instead, and to this day he is mocked for it. Only his father's good temper and deep sense of the absurd permitted the insult go by. "But the stallion that bears our mutual enemy is not one I would count among my kin."

"Do not be so hasty," his brother advises. "For while the gods' war-chief is wise beyond telling, he still can only learn the answers if he thinks to ask the question, and he does not ask what he thinks he has already conquered. He will ride his great stallion into the final battle in the hopes that he can avert what is already written - and then and only then will that stallion throw him, and turn hoof against master."

"Very well," Mick says grudgingly. "But still, I can't go visit him in the halls of the gods."

"There is another story, less well known," his brother says. "Our father was banished to walk the shores of the rivers of man, trapped without power in the body of a human woman, with only his wit to save him. Eight years he was there, and he bore three living children. Of the three, two died in war, far from home, and one lived on to have children of her own."

"She yet lives?"

"No, but her line goes on forth unbroken, mother to son, son to daughter. Find yourself our far-kin, and see if they can suggest to you some purpose for living."

"Not all of us have prophecies to help give us a roadmap," Mick says dryly.

"Oh, hush."

Mick smiles. "How will I find them? It's probably been generations, human-time."

His brother shrugs, a long slow roll of shoulders like mountains. "You have time," he says. "And when you find them, you'll know."

Mick nods, and returns to the realm of man, where a new age of steel has begun when he wasn't looking. Time does strange things when you enter the realm of legends, even if you only tarry what seems a short while. 

He travels, searching, and at times his father still shakes the earth beneath his feet.

He finds many people, bright people, clever people, wicked people and thinks - _maybe_ \- but no one feels right, and so he keeps going on.

The madness waxes and wanes, as he was warned; when he is mad, he cannot care for anything but fire, no matter how harmful it is to those around him. When he is sane once more, he usually has to leave - no human can survive the flames a jotun's son can and Mick is not keen for stories to spread to the ears of the gods.

He is often thrown in prison, to his amusement; human laws mean less than nothing to him, but neither does time. He gets older, and older still, searching.

His sister comes to visit him once every few years, bringing with her apples that shine like the sun, and so his face remains smooth and unlined. 

He accidentally eats too many one year, finding himself suddenly gawky and awkward and strangely hormonal, and they throw him into their children's prison instead. 

There's a boy there who everybody hates, but he's clever and he's wicked and his eyes burn a changing blue like there's a fire inside of him, and when the other boys hold him down on the ground, the boy thrashing as if he could make the earth shake by sheer will, Mick _knows_.

His sight goes red and he rushes the boy’s assailants with hands outstretched, beating them as he would have beaten the gods if he had not been so young or so mad.

The boy has the unlikely name of Leonard Snart, and Mick finds his brothers were right. Len provides all the purpose Mick could possibly need.

It's easy to ignore time passing with Len at his side, because Len has his ancestral grandmother's smile and clever brain, but also the irrepressible tendency to go start mischief where mischief's not wanted.

Mick would say that Len reminds him of his long-lost twin, with all the portion of their father’s cleverness taken before Mick could have a helping, but that's not _really_ the relationship they have, not after Len crawled into Mick's bed one winter evening and told Mick flatly that he'd take a yes or a no, but he'd like it decided upon before he goes crazy from pining.

Mick's already gone through several bouts of the madness, and Len hasn't cared. Mick always thought he'd never win himself a bride because madmen don't get to be that lucky.

Len is, in every way, better than the best bride he could hope for. 

"I'm not a _bride_ ," Len complains when Mick pays the bride-price piece by piece to a solemn-looking Lisa, who carefully counts out all the gold pieces and candy (Reeses peanut butter cups only - her request, but, then again, she _is_ only eight). "You don't honestly think - you're being ridiculous, I hope you realize."

"I'm not impoverished," Mick says. "It's to prove to Lisa that I'll treat you right."

"He will, Lenny," Lisa chirps. "Look: _fifteen_ peanut butter cups!"

"And something like thirty pieces of gold jewelry!"

"That too," Lisa says. “Aren’t you supposed to bring us an oxen or something?”

“I brought burgers from the supermarket,” Mick replies. “I can cook ‘em tonight.”

“That’ll do,” Lisa decides. “You can marry him.”

"Do we at least get to do the fun stuff after this?" Len mutters, because he's a grumpy soul who’s still upset that Mick's given him nothing but kisses so far. 

"Yes," Mick says. "Then I pay you the second part of your bride-price -"

"Second part?!" Len squawks. 

"- and then we take your dowry from your father's house. By force, if he's not inclined to give it fair and square. You mentioned some books you wanted to recover..?"

"Mom's old scrapbooks, yeah," Len says thoughtfully. "What the hell kind of wedding rituals do they have over in Keystone, anyway?"

"Why, is it different in Central?"

"There's usually a rabbi involved, and no money," Len says, then pauses. "I think?"

"Well, we can do that next, then." 

"You're crazy," Len says, but his eyes are shining and he can't stop smiling. 

"One day I'll take you to meet my family," Mick says, later, when they're alone on their honeymoon in a hotel in a city far from anyone that knows them.

The moonlight shines through the open window on Len's skin as he reclines upon the bed, lazy and sated.

"Your family?" he asks, obediently opening his mouth as Mick cuts another slice of apple and lays it on Len's tongue. The apple shines gold in the darkness; Mick’s not losing Len to anything as prosaic as old age. "They're still around? In juvie they said..."

"It's complicated with family," Mick says. "I have two brothers still living, and one sister, and my parents, too, technically, but I haven't been to see them since - my brother."

"Your twin," Len says, face filled with understanding. "You know it wasn't your fault, right?"

"I know," Mick says, and he does, after all this time. "But still, it's hard."

"Take all the time you want," Len says. 

But time is something that can't be relied on. Mick is the god of victory-in-waiting, of patience turning out justified, just like his mother, but the journey to that victory is unpredictable and the victory itself not always what one thinks it is.

Len's great victory comes at the Oculus only thirty years later; a blink in the eye of a jotun.

Mick calls for his sister.

"I cannot help you," she says apologetically. "I would send him back to you in a thrice if I could, you know that, but your bride died a hero, fighting a war -"

"He made it to Valhalla," Mick says with a sigh. Of course he did. Len never made anything easy.

"He is beyond our reach," his sister says.

"Not necessarily," Mick says. "Can you show me the way?"

"What are you thinking?"

Mick smiles. "That this isn't Len's first prison break."

After all, Len still hasn't met the family yet.

Mick's thinking it's time.

And if any god tries to stop him, Mick's thinking it might be time for a lot of things.

**Author's Note:**

> ...there's probably going to be more of this when I'm in the right mood to write it. Bonus points to everyone who knows what mythological figure got substituted.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Victory In Waiting](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13219953) by [RsCreighton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RsCreighton/pseuds/RsCreighton)




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